9/11 Was a HOAX – The American Government Killed Its Own People

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

9/11 Was a HOAX – The American Government Killed Its Own People

 

By John Kaminski

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/03/John_Kaminski/17.htm

(Editor’s note: This story is intended for people who have accepted the official version of the 9/11 story. It should be distributed widely to the uninformed few who still believe this tragedy was engineered by Muslim terrorists. Either by incompetence or by design, George W. Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen, and probably was involved in the planning of them. The American people might stand by and allow him to slaughter every nation in the world, but they will not stand for it when they know he participated the mass killing of his own people.)

Opposed by everyone in the world who was not bought off, the illegal invasion of Iraq was undertaken for many reasons ­ the imminent replacement of the dollar by the euro as the world’s primary currency, the tempting lure of untapped oil reserves, the desire to consolidate U.S./Israeli military hegemony over a strategically vital region ­ but the most important reason was to further obscure questions about the awesome deception staged by the American government that has come to be known as 9/11.

9/11 was a hoax. This is no longer a wild conspiracy assertion; it is a fact, supported by thousands of other verifiable facts, foremost of which are:

The attacks of 9/11 COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED without the willful failure of the American defense system. In Washington, Air Force pilots demanded to fly but were ordered to stand down. Yet instead of prosecuting the president and military leaders for this unprecedented dereliction of duty, military leaders were promoted and the president was praised for presiding over a defense system that suspiciously failed the most crucial test in its history. None of the deaths would have happened without the deliberate unplugging of America’s air defenses.

Planes that lose contact with control towers are usually intercepted by fighter jets inside of ten minutes, as the incident with the golfer’s plane a few months earlier so clearly demonstrated. Yet on 9/11, the jetliners that struck New York were allowed to proceed unmolested for more than a half-hour, and the plane that supposedly crashed in Washington was not intercepted for more than an hour and forty minutes after it was widely known that four planes had been hijacked.

The twin towers could not have collapsed as a result of burning jet fuel. Most of that fuel was consumed on impact. In the south tower, most of the fuel was spilled outside the building. Heat caused by burning jet fuel does not reach temperatures needed to melt steel. What does stand out as particularly suspicious and still unexplained is that fires raged out of control beneath THREE of the collapsed towers for ONE HUNDRED DAYS, clearly indicating the presence of some kind of substance utilized in the demolition of the structures.

The Twin Towers did not fall because of plane impacts or fires. Most likely explosives were placed on structural supports in the towers (as was done in Oklahoma City), and these controlled implosions snuffed out the lives of three thousand people.

FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted officials had no idea this kind of attack could happen when in fact the FBI had been investigating the possibility of EXACTLY this kind of attack for almost TEN YEARS. Numerous previous attempts at using planes as weapons, intimate knowledge of terror plans called Project Bojinka, and knowledge of suspicious characters attending flight schools who were being monitored by the FBI make his utterance a clear lie on its face.

In the weeks before 9/11, the U.S. received warnings from all over the world that an event just like this was about to happen, but FBI investigations into suspected terrorists were suppressed and those warnings were deliberately disregarded.

The names of the alleged hijackers, all ostensibly Muslims, were released to the public only hours after the attacks, despite Mueller saying we had no knowledge this would happen. This is an impossible twist of logic. If he didn’t know of a plan to strike buildings with planes, how would he know the names of the hijackers? Various artifacts were discovered in strategic places to try to confirm the government’s story, but these have all been dismissed as suspicious planting of evidence. Since that time several names on that list have turned up alive and well, living in Arab countries. Yet no attempt has ever been made to update the list. And why were none of these names on the airlines’ passenger lists?

Much like the invasion of Iraq, the anthrax attacks were designed to deflect attention from unanswered 9/11 questions in the patriotic pandemonium that followed the tragedy. In addition to making large amounts of money for the president’s father and his friends from the hasty sale of inefficient drugs to a panicked populace, the investigation into these killings was abruptly halted when the trail of evidence led straight to the government’s door, and has not been reopened. The anthrax attacks also amped up the climate of fear and deflected attention from the passage of the government’s repressive Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act was presented in the days after the tragedy supposedly as a response to it, yet it was clear that this heinous act, drafted to nullify provisions for freedom in the U.S. Constitution, was put together long before 9/11. In addition, testimony by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) revealed that most members of Congress were compelled to vote for the bill without even reading it. This was a vote to eliminate the Constitutional Bill of Rights, which has defined American freedom for 200 years, and it was accomplished when legislators voted for the bill without even reading it.

The invasion of Afghanistan was presented as an attempt to pursue the alleged perpetrators of 9/11, yet it had been discussed for years prior to the tragedy and actually planned in the months before the attacks on New York and Washington. Statements by Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Republican-written Project for a New American Century have stressed that America needed a formidable enemy to accomplish its aggressive geopolitical aims. The supposed enemy we attacked in Afghanistan was a diverse group of men from all over the world who were initially recruited, encouraged and supported by the American CIA.

The hole in the Pentagon was not made by a jumbo jet. Damage to the building was simply not consistent with the size of the hole nor the absence of debris. At the supposed point of impact, a whole bank of windows remained unbroken and there were no marks on the lawn. No airplane debris (except what was planted on the lawn) nor remains of passengers were ever found.

The president has admitted that he continued to read a story to schoolchildren in a Florida school for 30 minutes after being informed that two planes had struck New York and that the nation was under attack. He has never explained this puzzling behavior, nor how he saw the first plane hit. It was never televised, only recorded by a French crew filming firemen in New York. In that film, the plane in question does not appear to be a passenger airliner.

The plane in Pennsylvania was shot down and broke apart in midair. No other explanation can account for the wreckage, which was spread over a six-mile area, or the eyewitness accounts that describe debris falling from the sky.

Cellphone calls cannot be made from airliners in flight that are not close to the ground. As research by Professor A. K. Dewdney has shown, the emotional conversations between hijacked passengers and others would not have been possible under conditions that existed at that moment. These calls were cynical fabrications, exploiting the distraught emotions of those who lost loved ones.

Radio communications from firefighters on the upper floors of the Trade Center towers clearly indicate that fires were under control and the structure was in no danger of collapsing.

These are merely a few of the deliberately false statements made by U.S. officials about 9/11. They provide crystal clear evidence that our president, his staff, and many legislators should be indicted on charges of treason, obstruction of justice and mass murder. Above all, these evil men should be removed from their positions of authority before they implement more of their moneymaking murder schemes like the one they are now perpetrating on the innocent people of Iraq
Otherwise, we face a future of endless war abroad and merciless repression at home. Consider just a few more of the other unanswered questions from among the thousands of unexplained loose ends that all point to 9/11 being an inside job.

Who benefited from the suspiciously high numbers of put options purchased prior to September 11 for shares in companies whose stock prices subsequently plummeted, on the supposition that whoever was behind the hijacking was also behind most of the purchases of these put options? And what was the role of the new executive director of the CIA, Buzzy Krongard, who handled these transactions?

Why was the debris from the collapsed Twin Towers removed from the site with no forensic examination? Why was almost all of it sold to scrap merchants and shipped abroad where it would not be available for scientific examination?

Why does the government refuse to release any transcripts of communications or any records at all relating to signals of any form transmitted by those jets?

Why did so many people, from San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to many employees of companies in the World Trade Center who failed to come to work that day, know in advance that something bad was going to happen on Sept. 11, 2001?

Why do all the major U.S. media continue to act as if none of these questions is legitimate or relevant?

Today, millions of people around the world are protesting the criminal destruction of the nation of Iraq. But these protests won’t change the number of minds necessary to stop America’s criminal madmen from continuing with their genocidal aim of enslaving the entire world.

What WILL stop them is spreading the realization that President George W. Bush and his billionaire accomplices in the oil industry perpetrated 9/11 as an excuse to begin the militarization of America for the purpose of world conquest. History has shown all too clearly the deceived American people WILL support the destruction of faraway countries on phony pretexts of defending so-called freedom.

Thus the needless wars continue. Right now we watch high-tech weapons slaughter the defenseless people of Iraq. Soon it will be Iran, Syria, Colombia, Venezuela, North Korea, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and who knows where else. All these misguided atrocities will be possible because of the hoax known as 9/11.

But the American people will not ­ and cannot ­ tolerate leaders who kill our own people merely to invent a pretext ­ the war on terror ­ to go around killing anyone they like. If the American people DO tolerate such an insane strategy, then they clearly do not deserve to survive as a nation or a people.
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the coast of Florida and can’t understand why the president hasn’t been arrested for his obvious lies and crimes.

He has a book coming out soon titled “America’s Autopsy Report“, published by Dandelion Books.
‘t An Extremist, Fundamentalist or a Moderate Muslim. Then FINALLY They Came for Me the NON-PRACTICING Muslim And NO Muslims Were Left to Speak Out for ME.

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Neocon War Propaganda To Be Investigated

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Neocon War Propaganda To Be Investigated

 

Will panel investigate all the lies, foul play, deaths and cover ups surrounding the Tillman and Lynch cases or will it be another whitewash?

 

Steve Watson, Infowars.net

April 14, 2007

A U.S. House committee has announced it will hold hearings to investigate misleading military statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

As reported by the Associated Press, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said an April 24 hearing will be part of its investigation into whether there was a strategy to mislead the public.

It will “examine why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated, the sources and motivations for the accounts, and whether the appropriate administration officials have been held accountable,” the panel said on its Web site.

The House Armed Services Committee also is considering Tillman hearings, a spokeswoman for that panel said Monday.

The Tillman and Lynch cases are two clear and blatant examples of how the government has consistently lied to the public about events during both the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, often spinning situations and distorting reality in order to put the US military occupations in a better light.

We have covered both cases extensively and exposed the propaganda and the cover ups that have followed, now it seems, rather encouragingly, that some within the House are taking an interest in uncovering the truth and exposing the lies perpetrated by the Neocon White House war machine.

The Lynch case is well documented. In 2003 facing flack and extreme criticism the Bush administration orchestrated a clear piece of war propaganda in an effort to rally the people behind the troops and the Invasion of Iraq.

In April 2003 the US Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company took a wrong turning near Nassiriya and was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers. Nine of Lynch’s US comrades were killed. The Iraqis took Lynch to the local hospital, where she was kept for eight days.

The Iraqi soldiers fled the hospital days before Lynch’s rescuers stormed it. The doctors there, having already tried and failed to return Lynch to the Americans after they fired upon an ambulance which she was being transported in, described the “rescue” as a Hollywood show, as special forces stormed in with cameras rolling.

“It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show – an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.” one doctor later recounted.

First, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq was ordered by CENTCOM to tell journalists that soldiers exchanged fire during the Rambo like rescue, without adding that Iraqi soldiers had already abandoned the hospital, then the military released a green-tinted night-vision film of the mission, adding to the drama.

Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon then claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed, interrogated and possibly even raped.

Then news organizations began repeating reports that Lynch had heroically resisted capture, emptying her gun as she fired at her attackers.

But subsequent disclosures have proved all those details to be complete fabrications. Lynch was badly injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors made friends with her and treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived.

Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer after the event if the military’s portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Lynch said: “Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it’s wrong,”.

Lynch went on the record quickly and has since gone on to denounce the whole debacle as outright propaganda. This was perhaps wise given that four of Lynch’s rescuers and colleagues have coincidentally died since.

Petty Officer First Class David M. Tapper died of wounds received in Afghanistan. He took part in the rescue.

Lance Cpl. Sok Khak Ung was killed in a drive-by shooting. He was also part of the rescue team.

Spc Josh Daniel Speer died when his car crashed into some trees for no apparent reason. He was part of the rescue team.

Kyle Edward Williams, who worked in the same company as Lynch, died of “suicide”.

Will the House committee be investigating these deaths as part of the hearings?

We have previously reported on how Pat Tillman’s tragic death was also seized upon and used as a cheap propaganda tool by the government for the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. His death may have even been a criminal plot manufactured to this end, a suspicion that both military investigators and Tillman’s family have repeated.

After his death it was announced that Tillman, the All American poster boy, the former sporting hero who had traded in his football boots for army boots after witnessing the 9/11 attacks, had been tragically gunned down by evil Taliban terrorists whilst he was charging up a hill side to attack, bellowing orders to fellow Rangers.

A nationally televised memorial service and a Silver Star commendation cemented Tillman’s place as the nation’s first war hero since the story of Jessica Lynch’s capture and phony details of her rescue were foisted on the public in 2003.

The truth was that Tillman’s death was being exploited for public relations purposes by the U.S. military and the administration.

Weeks later, the Army acknowledged that Tillman had been a victim of friendly fire whilst on a routine patrol.

Tillman’s platoon of the Second Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, began the day that he died dealing with a minor annoyance in the southeastern part of Afghanistan where the soldiers were conducting sweeps, the Army records show, one of their vehicles would not start.

Against their own policy and after the overruling of some objections, the platoon split into two parts so that half the team, including Tillman, could go on to the next town for sweeps while the second half could tow the disabled vehicle to a drop-off spot.

But both groups ended up in the same twisting canyon, along the same road, without radio communication. And after the sounds of an enemy ambush, three Rangers in the second group wound up firing at members of the first group ­ at an Afghan soldier who was fighting alongside Tillman, and then at Tillman himself.

The Afghan was killed. According to testimony, Tillman, who along with others on the hill waved his arms and yelled “cease fire,” set off a smoke grenade to identify his group as fellow soldiers. There was a momentary lull in the firing, and he and the soldier next to him, thinking themselves safe, relaxed, stood up and started talking. But the shooting resumed. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel and in his body armor with numerous bullets.

The soldier next to him testified: “I could hear the pain in his voice as he called out, ‘Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat f­ing Tillman, dammit.” He said this over and over until he stopped,” having been hit by three bullets in the forehead, killing him.

It was also admitted that soldiers destroyed evidence ­ Tillman’s uniform and flak vest ­ after the shooting, claiming that they were a “biohazard”. However another soldier involved offered a contradictory take, saying “the uniform and equipment had blood on them and it would stir emotion” that needed to be suppressed until the Rangers finished their work overseas.

An initial investigation by then-Capt. Richard Scott, interviewed all four shooters, their driver, and many others who were there. He concluded within a week that while some of the gunmen demonstrated “gross negligence” others demonstrated “criminal intent” and recommended further investigation to push for the harshest possible criminal sentencing.

But Scott’s report disappeared after circulating briefly among a small corps of high-ranking officers. Some of Tillman’s relatives think the Army buried the report because its findings indicated foul play. Army officials refused to provide a copy to the media, saying no materials related to the investigation could be released. A second investigation was then commenced by a higher ranking officer which called for less severe punishment.

Richard Scott later gave testimony alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in their sworn statements so his findings could be softened.

Scott stated “watching some of these guys getting off, what I thought … was a lesser of a punishment than what they should’ve received. And I will tell you, over a period of time … the stories have changed. They have changed to, I think, help some individuals.”

The document containing Scott’s testimony was reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. In a published story in September 2005 the Chronicle highlighted the following passage from Scott:

“They had the entire chain of command (inaudible) that were involved, the [deleted], all sticking up for [deleted] … And the reason the [deleted] called me in … because the [deleted] … changed their story in how things occurred and the timing and the distance in an attempt to stick up for their counterpart, implied, insinuated that the report wasn’t as accurate as I submitted it …”

In another section of his testimony, he said witnesses changed details regarding “the distance, the time, the location, the lighting conditions and the positioning” in Tillman’s killing.

There are many other examples of conflicting testimony in the Tillman case including the fact that he may not have been killed immediately and was certainly given CPR hours after being shot in the head three times.

At least one Army officer, the records show, changed his sworn statements about which supervisor had actually ordered the split of the platoon and what conversations had occurred before the order was given.

A further review of the case by the Pentagon’s inspector general,Gen. Gary M. Jones found that Army officers told soldiers to remain quiet about the circumstances of Tillman’s death for fear of negative news coverage.

One or more members of the Tillman family will testify in the new hearings, in addition to Jessica Lynch herself.

The Tillman family have been very reluctantly outspoken since the tragic Death of Pat Tillman, “All I asked for is what happened to my son, and it has been lie after lie after lie,” Tillman’s father told the New York Times, explaining that he believed the matter should remain “between me and the military” but that he had grown too troubled to keep silent.

Quoted elsewhere Mr Tillman has stated “The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons… This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that (lower-ranking) people in the field do,” he said.

“After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,” Mr Tillman has said. “They purposely interfered with the investigation …. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out.”

Mr Tillman is certain that a cover up has been perpetrated and believes his son’s death may not even have been an accident.

“There is so much nonstandard conduct, both before and after Pat was killed, that you have to start to wonder,” Mr. Tillman said. “How much effort would you put into hiding an accident? Why do you need to hide an accident?”

Kevin Tillman, Pat’s brother (pictured above) has also been very outspoken and recently slammed the Bush administration and the war in Iraq in a lengthy article. Kevin Tillman wrote:

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Indeed, it has been revealed since his death that Pat Tillman was himself highly critical of the war in Iraq where he also served a tour of duty. Fellow soldiers have described the well spoken, well educated Tillman as having strong views, often openly stating “this war is so f­ illegal.” and describing Tillman as “totally against Bush.”

Moved in part by the 9/11 attacks, Tillman decided to give up his career, saying he wanted to fight al Qaeda and help find Osama bin Laden. He spurned an offer of a three year, $3.6 million NFL contract extension with Arizona Cardinals and joined the Army in June 2002.

Instead of going to Afghanistan, as Tillman expected, their Ranger battalion was sent to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Word of the new hearings comes three years after Tillman was killed and two weeks after the Pentagon released the latest findings of its own investigations into Pat Tillman’s death. The latest report once again faults as many as nine officers as responsible for mistakes and irregularities during the investigation into Tillman’s death, but also dismisses the notion of a cover up, much the same as a previous report did in 2005.

In all, the Army and Defense Department have conducted five investigations into Tillman’s April 22, 2004 death, with the most recent one pointing toward high-ranking military officers knowing the circumstances of his death long before Tillman’s family.

As reported by the AP, a memo sent to a four-star general a week after Tillman’s death revealed that then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that it was “highly possible” the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire. McChrystal made it clear his warning should be conveyed to the president.

The memo was provided to the AP by a government official who requested anonymity because the document was not released as part of the Pentagon’s official report into the way the Army brass withheld the truth. McChrystal was, and still is, commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, head of “black ops” forces and was the highest-ranking officer accused of wrongdoing in the report.

Tillman’s parents have since stated that they believe the memo backs the cover up theory. “He knew it was friendly fire in the very beginning, and he never intervened to help, and he essentially has covered up a crime in order to promote the war,” Mary Tillman said in a telephone interview. “All of this was done for PR purposes.”

As the AP commented, The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman’s family.

Although it is encouraging that the high profile Tillman and Lynch cases are being investigated, it seems there are countless others that should be deserving of the same treatment. One such example is the case of Jess Buryj, a soldier from Canton, Ohio, who (it turns out) died in a friendly fire incident – shot in the back.

When his parents were told by the U.S. military that Polish soldiers were responsible for his death, a soldier who served with Buryi could not bear for the truth to be buried and so told Buryi’s parents that an American G.I. was actually at fault. Buryj’s father was so shaken by the alleged cover-up that he came to question whether the body they buried was even their son’s.

Again and again, the press, the public, parents and spouses have been lied to about how young Americans in the military have died. The lies and the propaganda are endemic, just as the Bush government cannot afford to allow Americans to see flag draped coffins coming home, nor can they allow the truth of the war machine to be exposed and jeopardize their international killing spree.

source:
http://infowars.net/articles/april2007/130407Propaganda.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007

The Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy – but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government – the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security – remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” – didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere – while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war” in a “long war” – a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president – without US citizens realising it yet – the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions – and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the “what ifs”.

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack – say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani – because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us – staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody’s help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the “what ifs”. For if we keep going down this road, the “end of America” could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before – and this is the way it is now.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny,” wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

9/11 U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

 

Immediate Congressional investigation demanded, media oversight of clear and deliberate psychological warfare against American population non-existent

 

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 5 2006

Revelations that the US government had been in possession of footage released on Sunday depicting alleged Al-Qaeda hijackers and Osama Bin Laden since 2001 and evidence that the footage itself was filmed by security agencies, went unquestioned by the media – who blindly towed the official line that the tape was released by Al-Qaeda. This is smoking gun proof that the U.S. government is staging the release of alleged Al-Qaeda tapes and it demands an immediate Congressional investigation.

Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the “laughing hijackers,” Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts describe as surveillance footage taken by a “security agency.”

This explains the lack of a soundtrack in the video and the fact that the tape does not focus solely on Bin Laden but pans around and shows the attendees in the audience.

Furthermore, film of the Bin Laden speech, reported by the dominant media as new footage, was previously broadcast in the UK docudramaThe Road to Guantanamo, which was first seen on British television nearly seven months ago in March.

News reports over the weekend contained the admission that the U.S. government had been in possession of the footage since 2002, while others said it was found when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and yet it was still bizarrely reported that the tape, bearing all the hallmarks of having been filmed and edited by undercover US intelligence and having admittedly been in US possession for five years, was released over the weekend by Al-Qaeda.

Either Al-Qaeda has been given access to US intelligence surveillance tapes of its own organization or the tape was released by the US intelligence apparatus. The evidence provides no other explanation.

The fact that the same footage was used in The Road to Guantanamo is startling because the context of the clip in which it is seen portrays British and American intelligence agents showing doctored footage to detainees, whereby their likeness has been edited in with CGI to the Bin laden rally scene, using it to intimidate them into confessing to being Al-Qaeda members.

The latest video tape hoax is only the most recent of a dirty laundry list of past examples where old, re-hashed, or outright faked footage of Bin Laden and his followers was mysteriously obtained and released at the most politically expedient time. These examples are all referenced in our original investigation.

Recall that the Pentagon’s stated intention to artificially magnify Musab Al-Zarqawi’s role in Iraq was followed by the release of a video tape of Al-Zarqawi threatening the infidels.

The target of this leaked propaganda campaign to boost Al-Qaeda’s profile was said to be the “U.S. home audience,” and included planting fake stories in newspapers – one of which was later splashed on the front page of the New York Times.

The agenda dovetails with the necessity of the torture program – there are very few real terror cells in existence outside of the puppet mastery of the U.S. and British intelligence apparatus. To maintain a state of fear and obedience amongst the target “home audience,” there need to be regular “two minutes of hate” intervals and the artificial creation of supposed terrorist networks and plots.

The tapes are also a desperate attempt to prop up the official version of 9/11 as its credibility crumbles globally and a firestorm of awakening to the fact that the attack was an inside job rages.

I encourage everyone to fully imbue themselves of our original investigation and make it a viral story across the Internet. Click here to get the original story and lobby for mainstream media to pay attention.

We need to demand higher standards from our media starting with a proper investigation as to who the true source of this tape was and an immediate skepticism towards all such future alleged “Al-Qaeda” video tape releases.

A press that lazily dismisses the origins of these tapes as a side-issue is playing a central role in disseminating unchecked war propaganda and violating every code of journalistic ethical conduct.

The U.S. government’s role in obtaining and carefully stage-managing the dissemination of these tapes, many of them old footage re-released over and over again, is now without a doubt manifestly obvious and demands immediate Congressional investigation as part of a wider probe into the admitted fake news scandal that has characterized the Bush White House as the most duplicitous and manipulative administration in history and befits a regime that is engaging in psychological warfare against the American people.

source:
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/051006redhanded.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

9/11 Al Qaeda Tapes: Direct Link To Military Psyops And Donald Rumsfeld

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Al Qaeda Tapes: Direct Link To Military Psyops And Donald Rumsfeld

Following the trail for five minutes leads to Pentagon

 

Steve Watson / Infowars.net | October 5 2006

 

Following on from our three features on the latest dubious Al Qaeda video, We can reveal that further investigation into the origin of Al Qaeda video and tape release leads straight back to US military intelligence and Donald Rumsfeld.

The origin of the latest video, starring Mohammed Atta and flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah, has been swept under the carpet by the mainstream media who bizarrely admit that the government has had the tape since late 2001 but still suggest it is a new release by Al Qaeda.

Interesting also is the fact that in an NBC article, they admit that before receiving the “exclusive US analysis” of the London Sunday Times’ tape, they had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same tape of Atta earlier this year:

“The Sunday Times said it had obtained the video “through a previously tested channel” but gave no further details. NBC News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the videotapes early this year, but the Pentagon has not yet turned them over. “

This is an open admission that it is the Pentagon that has released this tape and not Al Qaeda. this dovetails with our previous analysis that revealed that the footage has been seen before in a docudrama, the Road to Guantanamo, where it is shown to detainees at camp Delta as an intelligence surveillance tape.

Along with experts on Islamic terrorist groups who are baffled by the video and have declared that it has come from a security agency, the very journalist who received the tape also says the source was not Al Qaeda.

It is also interesting that this journalist, Yousri Fouda is not only a Sunday Times journalist but also the London Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera. He is the guy who normally breaks all the Al Qaeda tapes anyway, so really the London Times connection is just a smokescreen.

All evidence indicates that the tapes are provided to Fouda and Al Jazeera by As Sahab, the “production company” of Al Qaeda, via a group known as Intelcenter, who also SELL the videos online.

Intelcenter normally have the tapes available for sale as soon as they are released, indeed in the past they have even predicted when they are going to get a tape before it is released, as they did with the second London bomber tape on the anniversary of 7/7.

 

Intel center is run by Ben Venzke, who is an interesting character. A google search results in the revelation that he used to be the director of intelligence at a company called IDEFENSE, which is a verisign company. IDEFENSE is a web security company that monitors intelligence from the middle east conflicts and focuses on cyber threats among other things.

It is also heavily populated with long serving ex military intelligence officials.

The Director of Threat intelligence, Jim Melnick, served 16 years in the US army and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and worked in psychological operations. From the IDEFENSE website:

Prior to joining iDefense, Mr. Melnick served with distinction for more than 16 years in the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency. During this period, Mr. Melnick served in a variety of roles, including psychological operations, international warning issues with emphasis on foreign affairs and information operations and Russian affairs. He also served in active political/military intelligence roles with an emphasis on foreign affairs. Mr. Melnick is currently a U.S. Army Reserve Colonel with Military Intelligence, assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Melnick has been published in numerous military and foreign affairs journals, and has received numerous military and DIA awards. Mr. Melnick has a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, a Master of Arts in Russian studies from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Political Science from Westminster College.

So here we have a company that by it’s own admission has a senior military psy-op intelligence officer who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld. As Intelcenter and Ben Venzke are directly connected to IDEFENSE, this puts Rumsfeld 3 small steps away from the Al Qaeda propaganda videos.

The NBC “US analysis” should be the focus of the latest tape and not the Times articles. It is an astounding piece of psyop propaganda that attempts in a shoddy way to fill in the “gaps” in 9/11 intelligence. The analyst, Evan Coleman, after admitting that the Pentagon has been “sitting on it” goes on to say:

“It is important for people to watch and realize that this video is conclusive proof that 9/11 was orchestrated by Al Qaeda at the most senior levels.”

He then makes a direct assault on the 9/11 truth movement by saying:

“This is the kind of video proof that is going to put a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theorists out in the cold and for good reason.”

Coleman contradicts himself throughout his own report by saying the Pentagon has had the video since 2001 whilst still towing the line that it was Al Qaeda that released the video.

The U.S. government’s role in obtaining and carefully stage-managing the dissemination of these tapes, many of them old footage re-released over and over again, is now without a doubt manifestly obvious and demands immediate Congressional investigation. Please spread this information wide and help us expose the most duplicitous and manipulative administration in history, a regime that is engaging in psychological warfare against the American people.

source:
http://infowars.net/articles/October2006/051006Rumsfeld.htm

Related: Surprise Surprise, It’s Another Al Qaeda Blockbuster Release

Related: Atta’s Father Says Video Fake, Credibility of ‘Hijackers Tape’ Crumbles

U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Government of the United States is Illegitimate

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

The Government of the United States is Illegitimate

 

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

May 28, 2007

The implications of a recent Democratic capitulation are not yet known and may not be felt immediately. Many are too stunned to write clearly about it. Many have tossed it off – politics as usual.

There is a new malady: Bush fatigue, characterized by the following symptoms: 1) fed up; 2) pessimism about the future of America, the free world, the world; 3) anger and frustration with a government completely uncaring (remember Katrina), out-of-control, unaccountable, unresponsive to anything or anyone but an increasingly tiny elite of corporate robber barons, militarists, and a hand-full of media moguls. In any case, John Edwards was correct. Democrats should have manned the barricades and left the consequences of veto to fall on Bush’s stupid head.

In the meantime, Democrats have promised to come up with a new strategy with regard to Iraq. It is hoped, however that Democrats understand that this is not politics as usual. Bush has become a rogue President, a reckless practioner of brinkmanship over leadership, of platitudes over policy. I cannot pretend to know what was said behind closed doors. I cannot begin to fathom what Faustian pacts had been made leading up to the Democratic compromise. I cannot begin to understand the nature of Bush’s strangle hold on what we thought had been a Democratically controlled Congress. I am tempted to ask: was Congress threatened? And, if so, with what? And how?

I am at a loss to explain what is most surely the weirdest, the oddest, the strangest exercise of power known to history. By rights in a normal world, a drooling idiot would be challenged to find his way out his front door. He would not be expected to rule. But to compare Bush to drooling idiots is not politically correct. It is unfair to idiots.

All theories fail to satisfy save one: the US government is no longer legitimate. For some time now, the rest of the world has known what Americans have denied to themselves. The Bush administration has betrayed the people and subverted the rule of law. It has no claim to legitimacy. The illegitimate Bush regime is the sheer exercise of raw, arrogant power hell-bent on illegitimate wars of conquest and oil. The government of the US has become Mass Murder, Inc.

This administration is guilty of the ruthless prosecution of unjust and ongoing war crimes and atrocities resulting in the horrible deaths of innocent civilians often with the unspeakable horrific use of white phosperous. The rest of the world saw clearly what Americans simply would not. It saw in the the Bush regime an arrogant, brutal, unjust and criminal junta, a militant gang of usurpers, thugs in suits.

Let the Bush apologists and fellow-travelers protest and howl. Screw ’em! They are but his complicit enablers. The truth will be told: the Bush cabal are Nazis or worse! Hitler had the good sense when all was lost to shoot himself. Who will provide Bush a new rope with instructions on its use?

A short recent history. Bush thugs stole both the election and “re-election”. Goppers themselves called it a coup d’etat and so it was -characterized by felonious, violent assaults on ballot re-counters in Florida. I am not the only one still outraged by this treasonous attack.

Later, when Bush had Iraq in his cross hairs, he began a truly Hitlerian campaign of lies, smears and transparent bullshit. Many were fooled. Beyond forgiveness, however, were members of Congress – Democrat and Republican alike -who knew better yet climbed on board the gravy train. Not all were mere accessories after the fact. It is exceedingly impolite, however, to salivate publicly at the mere mention of lucrative defense contracts.

By now, Bush’s case for war is known to have been a deliberately concocted fraud perpetrated upon the American people. Nothing said by Bush about 911 or about the war in Iraq has been, in any way, true. That debate is won. That case is closed. The verdict is in and Bush has been found a callous, deliberate liar. For me, the issue is: why is Bush not yet rotting in a dank cell when thousands of innocent Texans still languish in the Bush gulags down in Texas? Why have not formal charges been lodged at the International Tribunal to bring this mass murderer to trial for his crimes? Why are the rich, the powerful, the NEOCON connected still free to walk about and endanger the whole of humankind?

It has been said that never before had an act of war been so adamantly and powerfully opposed. Bush did not merely “not listen”, he presided over a deliberate and well-orchestrated campaign to demonize his opposition. His targets included Cindy Sheehan, whose own sacrifice for Bush’s vainglorious ambitions, were derided. Lives, careers, reputations were ruined by this sorry ass gang of crooks who daily flout the values of our founding.

It was not only the people of the US who were targeted by these Neo-nazis. It was any voice anywhere in the world which dared speak against the tyranny, which dared oppose the Bush campaign to wage aggressive war in pursuit of world domination. A warning to Bush enablers who still indulge delusions of Bush’s “divinity”, his supposed relationship with “the Lord”. Save it for your trial on capital crimes charges. See US Codes; Section 2441. It is not God that Bush talks to. In any case, spare me an idiot’s ideology. I want justice.

At last, when all is known to have been black-hearted, malicious lies, Bush is reduced to repeating a failed strategy because abandoning his crime in the commission of it will prove the case against him. The appropriation bill, it is said, was signed in blood. Therefore, more American lives are required to pull Bush’s sorry fat out of the fire. The future is now and it was forged with Bush’s order to attack Iraq. There was an urgency to stop the war before it began. There is greater urgency now to remove Bush from office.

To whom do we now turn to achieve this? Not the Democrats. They have made their GOP-like pact with Ol’ Scratch.

There is left but one solution. Revolution! It also fitting that the inspiration as well as the philosophical basis may be found in the history of this nation’s creation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ­ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ­ That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

No mere string of platitudes, the “Declaration” is a “revolutionary” document. It is the irrefutable case that when governments of any type become “illegitimate” it is the right of the people to abolish and replace them by any means. Moreover, the case is made that the “Crown” had become illegitimate in terms of its own precepts, primarily English law, common law, and principles espoused by the crown itself. After having established the principles compelling the American revolution, Jefferson went on to enumerate numerous, egregious violations of those laws and principles by the Crown.

There had been hope that Democratic opposition might work within the present framework to reign in a rogue and illegitimate regime. But continued democratic sellouts will change the paradigm, perhaps forever. Until Democrats put Bush’s feet to the fire, they will remain a part of the problem. Until they redeem themselves, they have become Bush’s complicit enablers.

During his campaign for the White House, Bush had said that he was a “uniter, not a divider”. But, as he demonized Iraq in the run up to aggressive war, he said “you are either with me, or against me”. I have bad news for Bush. Either he is for the Constitution or he is against it. Time and again he has proven himself to be against it. He has proven true the charge that he considers the Constitution a “goddamned piece of paper”. Having flouted the very bases of legitimacy, it is time for Bush to go.

As long as the contagion was confined to Bush’s illegitimate party and his illegitimate White House, impeachment, the only remedy short of revolution, might have been a viable solution. Now the contagion is no longer confined. The Democrats are equally complicit in the commission of Bush’s capital crimes. What other recourse is there when Congress proves itself complicit in the crimes of the executive?

Bush has left in his wake a broken and illegitimate government. The people are left no choice but a substantive redress of serious and fundamental grievances having to do with the very legitimacy of every government institution. Is there nothing left America but revolution?

An update from an American serviceman at an American military cemetary in Europe:

Well, I was a generationally removed GI in Europe, and it was Memorial Day. I wonder what these poor bastards would think if they were here today and could check out this little video from Take Back The Media: what do you suppose would cross their minds if they were to discover that a descendant of Nazi sympathizers and war profiteers is now the de facto dictator of the nation that they served in the titanic struggle to destroy the Nazis? Would that be seen as cruelly ironic, maybe, or as a sick joke, or what?

About the only conclusion I can draw, on this Memorial Day, is that the Nazis actually won the war after all.

– Barstool Chronicles

Additionnal resources:

• Will Cheney and Bush Ever be Held Accountable?
• This Government is Illegitimate
• Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush
• Beyond the Limits of Free Government – How Great Britain Drove Us to Independence
• Movement to impeach George W. Bush
• Impeach Bush
• Illegitimate Government
• Patriot Act: Global Connections
• American Police State
• The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
• Saudi King Slams ‘Illegitimate Occupation’ of Iraq
• Why Declare Independence

source:
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/05/government-of-united-states-is.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

How Can Bush Bring Freedom and Democracy to Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

How Can Bush Bring Freedom and Democracy to Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?

By Paul Craig Roberts

05/26/07 “ICH” — — The Washington, DC, think-tank, The American Enterprise Institute, camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization’s enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War.

AEI has the largest collection of warmongers in America. AEI “scholars” have agitated for war in the Middle East for years. A moronic president and 9/11 gave them their opportunity.

Now that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, the AEI warmongers are conspiring with Vice President Cheney to foment war with Iran.

Writing in The Washington Note, Steven C. Clemons reports that Cheney is working with the AEI warmongers to short-circuit the efforts of Bush’s secretaries of defense and state to find a diplomatic solution. Clemons reports that one former high level national security official describes the Cheney-AEI conspiracy as possibly an act of “criminal insubordination” against President Bush.

Now that the Democrats have betrayed their mandate of last November to end Bush’s war against Iraq and given Bush carte blanche to continue the gratuitous bloodshed, the neoconservative plan, spearheaded by Vice President Cheney, to initiate aggression against Iran is back on the front burner.

Disinformation is being fed to the media that Iran is responsible for attacks on US troops in Iraq. This disinformation is routinely reported without skepticism by the American media in the face of challenges from experts. For example, a recent British report concludes: “few independent analysts believe Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency.”

While the Cheney/AEI conspirators strive to whip up American anger at Iran with lies and disinformation, they are doing everything possible to provoke Iran. The warmongers have planted the story in the media that the US is conducting covert operations against Iran. The US Navy is conducting “exercises” off Iran’s coast. The US military in Iraq has violated diplomatic privilege and kidnapped Iranian officials in Iraq despite protests from the Iraqi and Iranian governments. The US government is stirring up more trouble in Lebanon by setting extremists Sunnis against Iran’s Hezbollah ally. In short, the US government is doing everything possible to start a war with Iran. Bombing Iran, perhaps after a contrived “false flag” operation, is the next step.

Bush continues to tell his favorite lies that he is bringing “freedom and democracy to Iraq” and that Muslims hate us because of our “freedom and democracy.” He continues to make these inane assertions even as he ignores the will of the American people and destroys habeas corpus, the foundation of civil liberty.

Bush ignores the will of the people as expressed in last November’s congressional elections and as expressed in opinion polls. The New York Times/CBS News poll released May 24 shows another sharp drop in public support for Bush and his war. America is “seriously off on the wrong track” was the response of 72 percent of the public.

President Bush, the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party have proved to the entire world that the American people have no voice. The American people have no more ability to affect their government’s policy than inmates in a gulag would have.

What do people in other countries think when they hear Bush prattle on about “freedom and democracy” while he ignores opinion polls and election results and detains people without warrants, tortures them, and puts them before military tribunals in which they are denied even knowing the evidence against them? Bush has contrived a situation for defendants in which no defense is possible. In Bush’s America, people can be executed on the basis of hearsay and secret evidence.

If this is “freedom and democracy,” what is tyranny?

Recent polls show that the majority of the American people are no longer fooled, no matter what politicians say and media report. The election last November demonstrated the electorate’s lack of support for continuing the war.

The problem is in implementing the will of the people. Democrats in Congress are not only recipients of AIPAC, oil industry, and military- security complex payoffs just as the Republicans are, Democrats are also behaving very cynically. They believe that it is Bush’s policy that gave them control of Congress in November and that by continuing to let Bush prevail, they will clean up on a larger scale in 2008. They believe that their antiwar base has nowhere else to go.

Their cynical logic is probably correct as far as it goes. Bush is being blamed for the war and its failure. The longer this goes on, the worse the situation for the Republicans. Prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, I wrote in a column that the unintended consequences of an invasion would be the destruction of Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement. It has taken longer than I thought, largely because of Americans’ blind desire for revenge for 9/11, but the prediction is on track.

The problem with the Democrats’ cynical logic is that allowing Bush to prolong the war in Iraq increases the chances that Cheney, Israel, and the neoconservatives can contrive a war with Iran. Most experts, and many in our own military, think that a war with Iran would go very badly for us, endangering our troops in Iraq by exposing them to more intense attacks from the more numerous Shiites, who would be armed with Iranian weapons that can neutralize our tanks and helicopters, leaving our fragmented and divided troops isolated and cut off from supplies and retreat routes.

The pending disaster would play into Cheney’s hands. With America faced with the loss of an army, Cheney and the neoconservatives would likely succeed in convincing Bush to nuke Iran. Cheney and Rumsfeld have already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack against non-nuclear powers. Surprised by the inability of the US military to prevail in Iraq and by Israel’s military failure against Hezbollah, the neocons concluded that the only way to establish US/Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East is to nuke Iran. The neocons believe that using nuclear weapons against Iran will demonstrate to the Muslim world that they have no alternative but to submit to US hegemony.

The Democrats are far from being alone in lacking the vision to see the abyss into which their cynicism is leading us. With the corporate media serving as propaganda ministry for the administration, Cheney will be able to whip up enough fear and anger to convince the American people that the use of nuclear weapons was imperative.

Bush’s popularity will return as he prevails over the enemy and tells Americans how he saved them from Iran’s nuclear weapons. The Democrats’ cynicism will have destroyed them and opened new avenues to destruction and violence.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury’s Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell.

source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17773.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Post-9/11 Renditions: An Extraordinary Violation of International Law

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

 

Post-9/11 Renditions: An Extraordinary Violation of International Law

 

Some say lack of due process in kidnappings and detention at secret prisons amounts to war crimes

 

By Michael Bilton

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Posted: 5/22/2007

PORTSMOUTH, England ­ A plane lands in darkness and is directed to a far corner of an airfield, well out of public view. A group of men described as “masked ninjas” ­ wearing black overalls and hoods with slits for their eyes, nose and mouth ­ descend the aircraft steps and make their way to a nearby airport building. Inside a small room the detainee is waiting under armed guard, perhaps already blindfolded. He is immediately hooded as a process known as a “twenty-minute takeout” begins. Soon he is aboard the plane, on his way to another country to be harshly interrogated and possibly tortured.

That is what happened to two Egyptian asylum seekers in Sweden on December 18, 2001, and to numerous other terrorist suspects since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Events like this rarely happened before 9/11, but many sources claim that the CIA began frequent use of the practice almost immediately afterward. Now its pattern is familiar and so is its odd name: “extraordinary rendition.”

 

 

The small Syzmany airport in northern Poland has long been rumored as a site involved in the CIA’s program of “extraordinary renditions.” (Photo by Nathaniel Heller)

The United States has never acknowledged such renditions, but the CIA’s activities have been extensively studied and documented by European and other governments, as well as organizations that monitor human rights violations. One such inquiry, by Sweden’s parliamentary ombudsman, was set in motion when the Egyptian asylum seekers were swept away ­ and Sweden landed in hot water with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Extraordinary rendition may be a new term, but it is not a new practice ­ the English did it in the 17th century, shipping prisoners to Scotland to be tortured. Secret prisons are not a recent invention either. Britain ran such a camp holding Nazi prisoners at Bad Nenndorf, Germany, after World War II. Evidence of ill treatment there was kept secret for 60 years. America also had a secret postwar camp known only as “P.O. Box 1142” at Fort Hunt next to the Potomac River in Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. There, former U.S. interrogators have now disclosed, more than 3,400 Nazi prisoners were kept “off the books” in violation of the Geneva Conventions while they were interrogated about vital technical intelligence that could be useful to America.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the United States captured terrorist suspects overseas and “rendered” them back to the U.S. or to a third country to face trial. The CIA’s extraordinary renditions reported to have occurred after 9/11 are quite different. What makes them extraordinary is that there is no judicial proceeding or due process of law; after the kidnapping, terrorist suspects simply disappear into a system of secret prisons for long-term detention and interrogation, sometimes accompanied by torture.

Human rights advocates and some legal scholars argue that extraordinary renditions are violations of international law, with some characterizing them as war crimes. For example, Professor Jordan J. Paust of the University of Houston, a former U.S. Army lawyer who is an expert on international law, has presented a formal analysis asserting that U.S. government leaders and those who planned or took part in extraordinary renditions could be prosecuted for committing war crimes.

The program began after the 9/11 attacks; within a week, President Bush signed a classified presidential “finding” authorizing an unprecedented range of covert operations, including capturing terrorists in foreign nations and what the Washington Post characterized as “the expenditure of vast funds to coax foreign intelligence services into a new era of cooperation with the CIA.” A portent of what was about to be unleashed came when Vice President Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion.”

Foreign intelligence services ­ including those inside the European Union ­ worked closely with their CIA counterparts in hunting those suspected of planning the 9/11 attacks or being al Qaeda members. According to journalist Stephen Grey’s respected chronology of known renditions before and after 9/11, terrorist suspects were being picked up under the new programs within weeks of the planes crashing in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Reports indicate that these men were tracked down, handed over to CIA special operations teams and then flown to secret detention centers where harsh techniques were used in their interrogation.

This article examines three thoroughly documented extraordinary renditions.

Sweden criticized by U.N. panel

Soon after 9/11, Swedish security police lodged objections to applications for asylum from two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed El Zari. Even before the Swedish government officially decided to return them to Egypt, a report by the Swedish ombudsman relates that the CIA offered use of an aircraft so the men could be expelled the moment a formal order was issued.

According to this report ­ which was based in large part on interviews with and documentation provided by Swedish security officials ­ at midday on December 18, 2001, CIA officials told their Swedish counterparts there would be no room on the plane for the Swedish security police. When the Swedes objected, the CIA relented but insisted that a security check would have to be conducted on the two detainees at Bromma Airport near Stockholm. That being Swedish territory, the Swedes believed they were in charge of the deportation of two men from their country. It did not turn out that way.

A few hours after the expulsion order was official, the men were arrested. They arrived at Bromma about 8:30 p.m. Swedish counterterrorism officers and CIA officials were present, along with the security police.

“Just before 9 p.m. the American plane touched down,” according to the ombudsman’s report, “Officer Y went to speak to the occupants of the plane. These included, in addition to its crew, a security team of seven or eight, among them a doctor and two Egyptian officials. Officer Y informed the American officials that A. [Agiza] and E.Z. [El Zari] were waiting in the vehicles parked in front of the police station [at Bromma Airport] and the Americans were taken to them.

“The security team, all of whom were disguised by hoods around their heads, then went up to the vehicles in which A. and E.Z. were sitting. One of the men was taken first to the police station by the team. Inside the station, in a small changing room, the American officials conducted what they had referred to as a security check.

“According to reports, a doctor was present in the changing room. When the check had been completed, the second man was sent for and the same procedure repeated.

“The inquiry has revealed that this security check comprised at least the following. A. and E.Z. were subjected to a body search, their clothes were cut to pieces and placed in bags, their hair was thoroughly examined, as were their oral cavities and ears. In addition they were handcuffed and their ankles fettered, each was then dressed in an overall and photographed. Finally loose hoods without holes for their eyes were placed over their heads. A. and E.Z. were then taken out of the police station in bare feet and led to the aircraft.

“In addition, K.J. lawyer has reported that E.Z. said that the security team had forced him to lean forwards in the changing room and he had then felt some object being inserted into his anal cavity. Afterwards he was equipped with a diaper. According to K.J., E.Z. then felt calmer, as if ‘all the muscles in his body were slack.’ E.Z. was, however, fully conscious for the entire journey. K.J. has added that E.Z. was blindfolded and placed in a hood and also forced to lie in an uncomfortable position on board the aircraft. …

“According to … witnesses, the security team conducted the security inspection rapidly, efficiently and professionally. The members of the team did not speak to each other but communicated using hand signals. …”

A Council of Europe inquiry obtained data from Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control agency, showing that the aircraft involved was a Gulfstream 5 executive jet with the call sign N379P, owned by Premier Executive Transport Services. The plane had set out on a prearranged two-day trip from the United States to board the two detainees in Sweden, take them to Egypt and then return to the U.S. after a brief refueling stop in Scotland.

This Eurocontrol data indicated that the executive jet that day covered many thousands of miles. It took off from Dulles International Airport during the early hours of December 18, flew direct to Cairo and collected two Egyptian officials; after refueling, it immediately headed for Sweden. The plane was on the ground at Bromma for just 65 minutes before heading back to Egypt.

According to the Swedish ombudsman’s report: “Just two representatives of the Security Police were on board the plane: officer Y and the civilian interpreter. The original intention had been for three people to accompany the plane to Egypt but late in the day they were informed by the captain of the plane that there was only room for two from the Swedish Security Police. A. and E.Z. were placed at the rear of the plane, each lying on a mattress to which they were strapped. Their handcuffs, ankle fetters and hoods were not removed during the flight to Egypt.

“The transport log drawn up by officer Y contains the following entry: ‘They were kept under observation for the entire time and the guards were changed every other hour. The doctor in the escort inspected them all the time. … [T]he body-search at the airport and the use of handcuffs and fetters was at the express order of the captain of the aircraft. In addition, it was noted that the explanation for requiring A. and E.Z. to wear hoods was that this was a policy that had been laid down on the basis of the events of September 11, 2001, about the transport of deportees with terrorist links.

“At about 3 a.m. the plane landed at Cairo. A. and E.Z. disembarked and were received by Egyptian officials. They were then driven off in a transit bus.”

Despite Egypt’s diplomatic assurance to Sweden that the two men would be treated humanely, Human Rights Watch says, based on testimony subsequently given by one of the two men, that they were subsequently tortured. U.N. Committees later decided Sweden had violated the Geneva Conventions by sending the men to Egypt.

“Egypt’s promise not to torture was a mere fig leaf for the Swedish authorities,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, an independent non-governmental advocacy organization. “Transferring people to countries where they face torture violates international law, regardless of what empty promises a country gives… The U.N. committee noted that Egypt had a well-documented history of torture abuses, especially when dealing with terrorism suspects. It said that Egypt’s routine use of torture, in combination with interest in Agiza by the U.S. as well as Egypt, should have led to a ‘natural conclusion’ that he was at risk of torture upon return.”

Egypt ­ a key ally of the United States ­ has long been the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, after only Israel. Its secret police are notorious for their brutality during interrogations. The U.S. State Department noted in a 2002 human rights report their frequent torture of prisoners, during which people were stripped, blindfolded, suspended from the ceiling or door frame with their feet just touching the floor; beaten with whips, fists, metal rods; subjected to electric shocks; and doused with cold water.

Canada apologizes to citizen

Canadian citizen Maher Arar was born in Syria in 1970 and emigrated to Canada as a teenager, settling in Montreal. In September 2002, he visited Tunisia with his family and was returning home to Canada via the United States. At New York’s Kennedy International Airport he was arrested, strip-searched and then held in an immigration detention center for 12 days. On October 8, he was told he was being deported to Syria. Shackled, he was taken to New Jersey, put on an executive jet and flown to Jordan. The next day, blindfolded, he was driven across the border to Syria and taken to Far Falestin, the notorious detention center run by the Syrian military intelligence.

Witnesses to a Commission of Inquiry in Canada testified what they and Arar experienced in Far Falestin: “[They] closed the cell door. It was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high.” Arar told the Commission he met the person he later discovered was the head interrogator, identified as George Salloum, and gave this account:

Salloum introduced him to “the chair” ­ a torture device capable of breaking a detainee’s back. Arar could hear fellow prisoners screaming with pain. Soon he was receiving the same treatment. He was beaten about his body, four lashes with a two-foot-long electric cable that had been shredded. Then he was asked questions. The torture would stop and start, getting worse and worse. He admitted being trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan only because he had decided to “say anything” necessary to avoid torture. He was constantly warned that “tomorrow will be worse.” He slept only two or three hours a night, on a cold concrete floor, known to his guards only by his cell number: Two.

Arar reported that he and other detainees were doused with cold water and had the soles of their feet beaten with thick black plastic cables. Another detainee told investigators that he was ordered to undress, except for his underwear. Interrogators then poured cold water on his body while he stood. He was then laid on the floor and, as interrogators trained a fan on him, more cold water was poured over him. They asked him to raise his legs from the knee and started beating him with black rubber cables.

Arar confessed to membership in al Qaeda, even though the Canadian Commission of Inquiry subsequently found that he had absolutely no connection with the organization or terrorism. After 10 months and 10 days of detention, he was transferred to Sednaya Prison, also in Syria, where he reported that conditions were “like heaven” compared with Far Falestin. On October 5, 2003, he was released from custody after signing a “confession” given to him by a Syrian prosecutor. He has since been awarded $8.9 million in damages (and an official apology) by the Canadian government but remains on a U.S. terrorist watch list.

How the CIA’s cover was blown

The aircraft used to transfer detainees from one country to another were supposed to be part of a clandestine CIA operation, but a sloppy mistake blew their cover and helped European investigators create a comprehensive record of renditions.

One frequently used aircraft was Gulfstream N379P, whose trips included delivery of Agiza and El Zari to Egypt. The company that owned it, Premier Executive Transport Services, was a CIA front whose officers had post office box addresses where 325 fictitious names also were registered. The plane’s connection began to emerge when another of its renditions got under way at 2:40 a.m. on October 23, 2001, at a little-used terminal at Karachi International Airport in Pakistan.

A 27-year-old Yemeni man, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, had been apprehended by the Pakistan intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He was taken blindfolded and in chains to be handed over to the CIA. Suspected of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, he had been reported missing for three weeks from Karachi University, where he was studying microbiology. He was flown from Pakistan to Jordan and then promptly disappeared.

What gave this transfer significance was the clumsy way in which it was handled. According to Pakistani sources, an airport official at the Karachi airport demanded a landing fee from the CIA plane. The crew refused. ISI agents then instructed airport staff that they would pay the fees, and the plane took off. But the incident created a minor stir that drew attention to the Gulfstream, which had been tucked away in a quiet corner of the airport so as not to be conspicuous.

On October 26, 2001, Masood Anwar, a Pakistani journalist with The News in Islamabad, wrote how Mohammed claimed he had been flown out of the country aboard a plane bearing tail number N379P. Those details ricocheted via the Internet among spy-hunters, bloggers and plane-spotting enthusiasts curious about precisely how the newly declared war on terrorism was being conducted.

Research by human rights groups, journalists and European governments subsequently revealed that the CIA had operated some 30 aircraft disguised by the use of companies like Premier Executive Transport Services and in other ways. Other aircraft were leased to operating companies and their subsidiaries. Eurocontrol data showed that 32 such aircraft made at least 1,245 stopovers in the various European countries.

Dozens of flights went to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. was detaining terrorism suspects. European investigators believed many of the flights were for extraordinary renditions. Eurocontrol data show the CIA planes made the following stopovers between October 2001 and the end of 2005: 76 in Azerbaijan; 72 in Jordan; 61 in Egypt; 52 in Turkmenistan; 46 in Uzbekistan; 40 in Iraq; 40 in Morocco; 38 in Afghanistan; and 14 in Libya.

source:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/MilitaryAid/report.aspx?aid=855

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Israel 2007: worse than apartheid

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Israel 2007: worse than apartheid

 

Ronnie Kasrils: COMMENT

 

A Palestinian demonstrates against the construction of the wall. (Photograph: AP)

21 May 2007 11:59

Travelling into Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency.

It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger. Fortunately for me, travelling in a South African embassy vehicle with official documents and escort, the delays were brief.

Sweeping past the lines of Palestinians on foot or in taxis was like a view of the silent, depressed pass- office queues of South Africa’s past. A journey from one West Bank town to another that could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians, with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers.

My friend, peace activist Terry Boullata, has virtually given up her teaching job. The monstrous apartheid wall cuts off her East Jerusalem house from her school, which was once across the road, and now takes an hour’s journey. Yet she is better off than the farmers of Qalqilya, whose once prosperous agricultural town is totally surrounded by the wall and economically wasted. There is only one gated entry point. The key is with the occupation soldiers. Often they are not even there to let anyone in or out.

Bethlehem too is totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ’s birthplace.

The “security barrier”, as the ­Israeli’s term it, is designed to crush the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettoes. Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol roads and alarm systems. It will be 700km long and, at a height of 8m to 9m in places, dwarfs the Berlin Wall.

The purpose of the barrier becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements — some of which are huge towns — and annexes more and more Palestinian territory.

The Israelis claim the purpose of the wall is purely to keep out terrorists. If that were the case, the Palestinians argue, why has it not been built along the 1967 Green Line border? One can only agree with the observation of Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, who has stated: “It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers.”

The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison. It is shocking to discover that certain roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa.

Gaza provides a desolate landscape of poverty, grime and bombed-out structures. Incon- gruously, we are able to host South Africa’s Freedom Day reception in a restaurant overlooking the splendid harbour and beach. Gunfire ­rattles up and down the street, briefly interrupting our proceedings, as some militia or other celebrates news of the recovery from hospital of a wounded comrade. Idle fishing boats bob in long lines in the harbour, for times are bad. They are confined by Israel to 3km of the coast and fishing is consequently unproductive. Yet, somehow, the guests are provided with a good feast in best Palestinian tradition.

We are leaving through Tel Aviv airport and the Israeli official catches my accent. “Are you South African?’ he asks in an unmistakable Gauteng accent. The young man left Benoni as a child in 1985. “How’s Israel?” I ask. “This is a f**ked-up place,” he laughs, “I’m leaving for Australia soon.”

“Down under?” I think. I’ve just been, like Alice, down under into a surreal world that is infinitely worse than apartheid. Within a few hours I am in Northern Ireland, a guest at the swearing in of the Stormont power-sharing government of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.

Not even PW Botha or Ariel ­Sharon were once as extreme as Ian Paisley in his most riotous and bigoted days. Ireland was under England’s boot for 800 years, South Africa’s colonial-apartheid order lasted 350 years. The Zionist colonial-settler project stems from the 1880s. The Israeli ruling class, corrupt and with no vision, can no longer rule in the old way. The ­Palestinians are not prepared to be suppressed any longer. What is needed is Palestinian unity behind their democratically elected national government, reinforced by popular struggles of Palestinians and progressive Israelis, supported by international solidarity.

South Africa’s stated position is clear. The immediate demands are recognition of the government of national unity, the lifting of economic sanctions and blockade of the Palestinian territories, an end to the 40-year-old military occupation and resumption of negotiations for a two-state solution.

On a final note, the invitation to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as head of a national unity government was welcomed by President Mahmoud Abbas, and will be dealt with by our government.

As they say in Arabic: “Insha ’Allah [God-willing].”

Ronnie Kasrils is Minister of Intelligence

source:
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=308966&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal

By Donald Macintyre

Published: 26 May 2007

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

The declaration by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser at the time and today one of the world’s leading international jurists, is a serious blow to Israel’s persistent argument that the settlements do not violate international law, particularly as Israel prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the war in June 1967.

The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked “Top Secret” and “Extremely Urgent” and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author’s summary, “that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank – one of the main problems to be solved in any peace deal: ” I believe that I would have given the same opinion today.”

Judge Meron, a holocaust survivor, also sheds new light on the aftermath of the 1967 war by disclosing that the Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, was ” sympathetic” to his view that civilian settlement would directly conflict with the Hague and Geneva conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers.

Despite the legal opinion, which was forwarded to Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, but not made public at the time, the Labour cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements. This paved the way to growth which has resulted in at least 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank today.

Judge Meron, 76, is now an appeal judge at the Tribunal. Speaking about his 1967 opinion for the first time, he also tells tomorrow’s Independent Magazine: “It’s obvious to me that the fact that settlements were established and the pace of the establishment of the settlements made peacemaking much more difficult.”

Blaming restrictions on Palestinian movement for the devasatation of the Palestinian economy, the World Bank earlier this month acknowledged Israeli security concerns but added that many of the restrictions were aimed at ” enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population.” The settlements and their “jurisdictions” effectively control about 40 per cent of the area of the West Bank.

The argument that the settlements are illegal, stated in successive UN resolutions, and by the International Court of Justice advisory opinion condemning the separation barrier in 2004, is reinforced by such an authoritative source. It strengthens the political case in any “final status” negotiations on borders with the Palestinians for genuinely equitable land swaps of Israeli territory to a future Palestinian state if Israel is to retain settlement blocks.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon secured a promise in 2004 from President George Bush that large Israeli “population centres” in the West Bank could remain in Israel in any such negotiations. In a subsequent letter to the Palestinians, the President promised that final borders had to be subject to agreement by negotiation.

Judge Meron’s memorandum was obtained from the Israel State Archives. His subsequent defence of it amounts to a direct challenge to Israel’s continuing contention that the Geneva Convention’s provisions on settling people in occupied territory did not apply to the West Bank because its annexation by Jordan between 1949 and 1967 had been unilateral.

The memorandum was written in September 1967 as the Eshkol government was already considering Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, seized from Syria during the Six Day War. It says that the international community had already rejected the “argument that the West Bank is not ‘normal occupied territory’.”

It pointed out that the British ambassador to the United Nations, Lord Caradon, had already asserted that Israel’s position was that of an occupier. It added that a decree from the army command saying that military courts would “fulfil Geneva provisions” indicated that Israel thought so too.

Judge Meron also says in his interview that such an argument would not in any case have applied to the Golan Heights which had been undisputed as sovereign Syrian territory prior to the Six Day War.

While the Olmert government has so far rejected calls for peace negotiations by Syria’s President Bashir Assad, it has been weighing a welter of internal advice proposing that it explores talks seeking an end to Syrian support for Hizbollah and Hamas in return for restoring the Golan Heights to Syria.

The memorandum, details of which were published by the Israeli writer Gershom Gorenberg last year, also says settlements built on private land would explicitly contravene the 1907 Hague Convention.

The only implicit acknowledgement of the Meron memorandum – which Mr Gorenberg established also went to Moshe Dayan, the triumphant Defence Minister during the Six Day War – was that one of the first West Bank settlements, Kfar Etzion, was initially called a “military outpost” although it was already, in effect, a civilian settlement. The memorandum said there was no legal prohibition against military posts in occupied territory.

Ehud Olmert fought the Israeli election last year on a programme of unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank – usually thought to mean dismantling settlements east of the separation barrier, which cuts deep into the West Bank in places. But this strategy was abandoned after the Lebanon war.

Mark Regev, the foreign ministry spokesman, said yesterday: “We do not accept that the West Bank is occupied in the classic sense.” He added that it was not sovereign Jordanian territory before 1967 and it had not enjoyed legal status since the British mandate, which had the remit, underpinned by the League of Nations, of establishing a Jewish national home.

He added: “That said we accept the principle of two states living side by side and obviously in the creation of this state settlements will be coming down. I would point anyone who says that is impossible to what happened in Gaza less than two years ago.”

Mr Regev also said that in some settlements – like Hebron where Jews left after a massacre by Arabs in 1929 – Jews had a long history of residence preceding the War of Independence in 1948.

source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2584164.ece

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The Whole World by “War on Terror” – 13 Jumadil Awal 1428 H (30.5.07)

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

The Government of the United States is Illegitimate

All theories fail to satisfy save one: the US government is no longer legitimate. For some time now, the rest of the world has known what Americans have denied to themselves. The Bush administration has betrayed the people and subverted the rule of law. It has no claim to legitimacy. The illegitimate Bush regime is the sheer exercise of raw, arrogant power hell-bent on illegitimate wars of conquest and oil. The government of the US has become Mass Murder, Inc.

This administration is guilty of the ruthless prosecution of unjust and ongoing war crimes and atrocities resulting in the horrible deaths of innocent civilians often with the unspeakable horrific use of white phosperous. The rest of the world saw clearly what Americans simply would not. It saw in the the Bush regime an arrogant, brutal, unjust and criminal junta, a militant gang of usurpers, thugs in suits.
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/05/government-of-united-states-is.html

 

===

 

9/11 : New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action

Probe Finds ‘Rendition’ Of Terror Suspects Illegal.

So began an operation the CIA calls an “extraordinary rendition,” the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections.

The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to “degrading and inhuman treatment” and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.
http://snipurl.com/1mmx7

===

 

9/11 : An Extraordinary Violation of International Law

Some say lack of due process in kidnappings and detention at secret prisons amounts to war crimes.

PORTSMOUTH, England — A plane lands in darkness and is directed to a far corner of an airfield, well out of public view. A group of men described as “masked ninjas” — wearing black overalls and hoods with slits for their eyes, nose and mouth — descend the aircraft steps and make their way to a nearby airport building. Inside a small room the detainee is waiting under armed guard, perhaps already blindfolded. He is immediately hooded as a process known as a “twenty-minute takeout” begins. Soon he is aboard the plane, on his way to another country to be harshly interrogated and possibly tortured.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/MilitaryAid/report.aspx?aid=855

 

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War Crime : Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo

Psychologists were central to the development of the abusive interrogation paradigm developed at Guantanamo and migrated to Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17790.htm

 

===

 

The Dead in Afghanistan

U.S. numbers of military deaths in Iraq1 receive a lot of attention. Unfortunately, other deaths in Iraq do not receive their due respect.

But American public awareness of murder/death in Afghanistan is cloudy. Nor do people realise that foreign troops are as unwelcome in Afghanistan as they are in Iraq. This article is about some of those deaths in Afghanistan. Civilian deaths have recently infuriated the Afghan people. The Americans ‘pay off’ these deaths -as if money is compatible with and resolves grief.

Some very callous remarks have been made by the U.S. Military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a ‘comment’ made to the article (18.05): “As for the muslims- kill ’em all and let satan sort ’em out. I don’t think G_D wants anything to with them- he sent them to the pit after all.”

And who supports this war criminal attitude? V.P. Cheney.
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/05/dead-in-afghanistan-may-2007.html

 

===

 

Bush’s New Middle East: “Pack up and leave or stay home and die”

It’s hard to know what Bush hopes to accomplish by backing the bloody siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, but one thing is certain; things are never as they seem. In an interview on Democracy Now last week, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh stated that, Fatah al-Islam—the group of Sunni extremists inside the camp–were getting material support from the Saudis, the Bush administration and members of the Lebanese political establishment.

So, the Bush administration is supporting terrorism? That’s right. Sy Hersh said.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m33252

 

===

 

Israel 2007: worse than apartheid

The following is Ronnie Kasrils – South Africa Minister of Intelligence – testimony and experience upon his visit to Israel and Occupied Palestine; published by an internationally recognized Jewish South African in a major South African paper (Mail&Guardian):

“Travelling into Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency.”
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2007/05/28/israel-2007-worse-than-apartheid/

 

===

 

How Can Bush Bring Freedom and Democracy to Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?

What do people in other countries think when they hear Bush prattle on about “freedom and democracy” while he ignores opinion polls and election results and detains people without warrants, tortures them, and puts them before military tribunals in which they are denied even knowing the evidence against them? Bush has contrived a situation for defendants in which no defense is possible. In Bush’s America, people can be executed on the basis of hearsay and secret evidence.

If this is “freedom and democracy,” what is tyranny?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17773.htm

 

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Why the US is losing its war on cocaine

America has spent billions battling the drug industry in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. And the result? Production as high as ever, street prices at a low, and the governments of the region in open revolt. Hugh O’Shaughnessy reports from La Paz, Bolivia
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2586645.ece

 

===

 

Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2584164.ece

 

===

 

Celebrating the Rule of Force, Not Freedom

Americans might be honoring the dead from U.S. wars, but in no case did any of those dead whom we memorialize today die for “our freedom.” They died, instead, because our political classes pointedly understand that promoting war is good for them.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17791.htm

 

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Worse than the worst: War Crime Act

Iraq: it’s worse than you can possibly imagine, and worse than we can possibly know.
http://snipurl.com/1mmv7

 

===

 

Clinton didn’t read 2002 Iraq report

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is among several presidential candidates who didn’t read a 2002 intelligence report on Iraq before voting for war. Members of Congress had to read the report in a secure location but The Washington Post said in 2004 only six senators registered and read it before the vote authorizing the invasion.
http://snipurl.com/1mmve

 

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Chopper attack, bombs kill 10 U.S. troops in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Ten U.S. troops died in Iraq on Monday, including eight killed in a deadly chain of events that began when a U.S. helicopter was shot down, according to a U.S. military official.

Both helicopter pilots were killed.

Two Bradley fighting vehicles rushing to the helicopter crash site were hit by exploding roadside bombs, killing six soldiers and injuring three, the official said.

In a separate attack on Memorial Day, two other U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while conducting a “combat security patrol” in southern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/29/iraq.main/index.html?section=cnn_latest

 

===

 

Eight US soldiers killed in Iraq

Two U.S. military personnel were killed when their helicopter came down under enemy fire north of Baghdad and six more died when a column of vehicles heading to the crash site was ambushed,
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29659728.htm

 

===

 

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 28 May 2007

• US troops wipe out Iraqi family following Resistance bomb attack that killed two American Marines in Barwanah, near al-Hadithah, Sunday night.
• American family announces death of Marine in Iraq.
• Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq denounces bombing of tomb of Sufi Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Kaylani on Monday, calls for unity and calm.
• Resistance group blasts “Green Zone” with Grad rockets Monday afternoon.
• US admits two more American soldiers killed in Iraq.
• Resistance fighters blast US mine sweeper near Balad late Sunday night, killing all aboard.
• Resistance blasts US-occupied base in Balad.
• US soldier reported killed in Resistance bombing in al-Mushahadah Sunday morning.
• Resistance group reports sharpshooter attack kills US soldier in al-Mushahadah, Friday morning.
• US soldier killed in Resistance bomb attack in Kirkuk.
• Puppet regime troops arrest Egyptian woman, three of her children in Baghdad.
• Attack leaves seven puppet policemen dead in Baghdad’s al-Fadl district.
• Tikrit, Resistance fighters kill four bodyguards of puppet police official.
• Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee near ad-Dujayl Saturday afternoon, killing American troops aboard.
• Shi‘i sectarian militia, puppet “National Guards” continue driving Sunnis out of village near al-Miqdadiyah for second straight day.
• Salman Bak, Resistance blasts puppet “Interior Ministry” Base Monday morning.
• Resistance fighters kill Shi‘i sectarian gunmen in al-Mada’in Monday morning.
• Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee in al-Mada’in midday Sunday killing US troops aboard.
• Al-Latifiyah, Resistance attack destroys US supply truck, killing driver Saturday night.
• Resistance sharpshooter kills puppet “National Guard” in al-Latifiyah Wednesday.
• Body in US military uniform found in Jurf as-Sakhr area early Monday.
• Kirkuk, Resistance bomb targets guards of puppet police commander.
• British forces admit attack on British occupation headquarters in al-Basrah Airport.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2007/0507/iraqiresistancereport_280507.htm

 

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Pregnant woman, three men killed at Lebanese checkpoints

Four people, including a pregnant woman, were killed early Tuesday in the Lebanon as the death of a soldier brought the toll to at least 79 dead and further intensified tensions, local media said.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070529/66290201.html

 

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‘We have no rights and no future’

The standoff between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants has focused attention on the 400,000 Palestinian refuges in the country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,2090477,00.html

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UN envoy says Israel attacks on Gaza excessive

A U.N. human rights investigator criticised Israel on Tuesday for violating international law in the Gaza Strip through a “disproportionate” use of force and killing of civilians.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?rpc=401&storyId=L29522201

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Israel Gets OK to Expand Gaza Attacks

The Israeli campaign – which has relied primarily on intensified airstrikes in the past two weeks – has forced Hamas leaders to lie low in recent days. On Monday, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas stayed away from a weekly Cabinet meeting in Gaza City.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6666073,00.html

 

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UK occupation forces soldier is killed by Taliban

“The soldier died as a result of enemy action. Next of kin have been informed and have requested a 24-hour delay before the soldier is named.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007240578,00.html

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Afghan women cry for help : 3 Minute Video

Self-immolation by women continues to be a problem in the Afghan province of Herat, with on average 10 women a month attempting suicide by setting themselves on fire. Not all of them succeed.
http://snipurl.com/1mmw1

 

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Should U.S. intervention in Sudan be supported? A Closer Look

The U.S. calls Sudan a failed and rogue state. Its internal conflicts are portrayed as a fight between Muslims and non- Muslims and blacks and Arabs. A study of the history of Sudan, especially the modern era impact of external political and economic forces from just before the turn of the 20th century to the present, contradicts and distorts those simple labelings.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17793.htm

 

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Heroin is “Good for Your Health”: Occupation Forces (US) support Afghan Narcotics Trade

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Heroin is “Good for Your Health”: Occupation Forces (US) support Afghan Narcotics Trade

 

Multibillion dollar earnings for organized crime and Western financial Institutions

 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Globalresearch.ca

 

April 29, 2007

The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions.

The proceeds of this lucrative multibllion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.

The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liason with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements.

“A radio message broadcast across the province assured local farmers that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would not interfere with poppy fields currently being harvested.

“Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers of ISAF and ANA do not destroy poppy fields,” it said. “They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods.”

The advertisement, which was drafted by British officers and carried on two local stations, infuriated Afghan officials as high up as President Hamid Karzai, who demanded an explanation.” ( The Guardian, 27 April 2007)

While the controversial opium ads have been casually dismissed as an unfortunate mistake, there are indications that the opium economy is being promoted at the political level (including the British government of Tony Blair).

The Senlis Council, an international think tank specialising in security and policy issues on contract to NATO is proposing the development of licit opium exports in Afghanistan, with a view to promoting the production of pharmaceutical pain-killers, such as morphine and codeine. According to the Senlis Council, “the poppies are needed and, if properly regulated, could provide a legal source of income to impoverished Afghan farmers while, at the same time, depriving the drug lords and the Taliban of much of their income.” (John Polanyi, Globe and Mail, 23 September 2006)

The Senlis Council offers an alternative where “regulated poppy production in Afghanistan” could be developed to produce needed painkillers. The Senlis statement, however, fails to address the existing structure of licit opium exports, which is characterised by oversupply . The Senlis’ campaign is part of the propaganda campaign. It has contrbuted to providing a false legitimacy to Afghanistan’s opium economy. (See details of Senlis Project), which ultmately serves powerful vested interests.

How much opium acreage is required to supply the pharmaceutical industry? According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which is in charge of examining issues pertaining to the supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, “the supply of such opiates has for years been at levels well in excess of global demand”.(Asian Times, February 2006) The INCB has recommended reducing the production of opiates due to oversupply.

At present, India is the largest exporter of licit opium, supplying approximately 50 percent of licit sales to pharmaceutical companies involved in the production of pain-killing drugs. Turkey is also a major producer of licit opium.

India’s opium latex “is sold to licensed pharmaceutical and/or chemical manufacturing firms such as Mallinckrodt and Johnson & Johnson, under rules established by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the International Narcotics Control Board, which require an extensive paper trail.”

The area allocated to licit State controlled opium cultivation in India is of the order of a modest 11,000 hectares, suggesting that the entire demand of the global pharmaceutical industry requires approximately 22,000 hectares of land allocated to poppy production. Opium is not in short supply. This demand of the pharmaceutical industry is already met.

Soaring Afghan Opium Production

The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a 59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.

The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that “the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers. (Guardian, op. cit).

Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade, which has increased 21 fold since the 2001 Us-led invasion.

What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.

Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.

The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban

Multibillion dollar trade

According to the UN, Afghanistan supplies in 2006 some 92 percent of the world’s supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.

The UN estimates that for 2006, the contribution of the drug trade to the Afghan economy is of the order of 2.7 billion. What it fails to mention is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenues generated by this lucrative contraband accrues to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions. A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country.

(See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan,
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf , Vienna, 2003, p. 7-8)

“Afghan heroin sells on the international narcotics market for 100 times the price farmers get for their opium right out of the field”.(US State Department quoted by the Voice of America (VOA), 27 February 2004).

Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram.

Narcotics On the Streets of Western Europe

One kilo of opium produces approximately 100 grams of (pure) heroin. 6100 tons of opium allows the production of 1220 tons of heroin with a 50 percent purity ratio.

The average purity of retailed heroin can vary. It is on average 36%. In Britain, the purity is rarely in excess of 50 percent, while in the US it can be of the order of 50-60 percent.

Based on the structure of British retail prices for heroin, the total proceeds of the Afghan heroin trade would be of the order of 124.4 billion dollars, assuming a 50 percent purity ratio. Assuming an average purity ratio of 36 percent and the average British price, the cash value of Afghan heroin sales would be of the order of 194.4 billion dollars.

While these figures do not constitute precise estimates, they nonetheless convey the sheer magnitude of this multibillion dollar narcotics trade out of Afghanistan. Based on the first figure which provides a conservative estimate, the cash value of these sales, once they reach Western retail markets are in excess of 120 billion dollars a year.

(See also our detailed estimates for 2003 in The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade, by Michel Chossudovsky, The UNODC estimates the average retail price of heroin for 2004 to be of the order of $157 per gram, based on the average purity ratio).

Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade

The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN’s assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.

The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.

(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).

Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004).

Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) consitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).

A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.

source:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070604&articleId=5514

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

How The Presstitutes Lie To America

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

How The Presstitutes Lie To America

 

Example: How The Press Has Become A Tool Of Our Government

The following article entitled, She was ‘fighting to the death …’ states,

She was ‘fighting to the death …’
By Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Lynch, 19, a supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die in fighting 11 days ago, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy took a wrong turn in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

“She was fighting to the death,” the official said. “She did not want to be taken alive.”

Lynch was stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position, the official said, noting that initial intelligence reports indicated that she had been stabbed to death.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5548808.htm

The Reality was quite different as revealed in this report.

Rescued POW had no gunshot, knife wounds: father

WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 03, 2003
The father of rescued POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday she suffered no gunshot or knife wounds at the hands of her Iraqi assailants, contrary to reports quoting a US official.

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030403213949.0bsaiduj.html

While the first article is clearly a complete fabrication attributed to “official sources” it is convincing evidence of how our journalists have prostituted themselves and become a part of the propaganda machine, employed to lie and distort the truth.

source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2558.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Massacre in Mogadishu ­war crime made in the USA

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Massacre in Mogadishu ­war crime made in the USA

 

Bill Van Auken, WSWS

28 April 2007

The brutal military siege against the Somali capital of Mogadishu constitutes a war crime for which the US government bears the principal responsibility.

While the mass media in the US itself has largely averted its eyes from the carnage, Ethiopian military units, backed and advised by Washington, have unleashed an intense bombardment of Mogadishu’s crowded and impoverished urban neighborhoods, killing and wounding thousands and turning hundreds of thousands more into homeless refugees.

This latest round of fighting has pitted the US-backed Ethiopian forces and, in a lesser role, forces loyal to the so-called Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of former warlord Abdullahi Yusuf against supporters of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which had administered the city and much of southern Somalia before the US-backed Ethiopian invasion last December. The siege follows a similar Ethiopian offensive against Mogadishu three weeks ago in which more than 1,000 people were killed, the great majority of them­then as now­civilians.

Long-range artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships have conducted ceaseless and indiscriminate shelling of the city for nearly a week and a half. Much of the capital lies in ruins, while hospitals, schools and housing have not been spared.

On Wednesday, four Ethiopian rockets tore through the SOS Children’s Villages hospital in Mogadishu, one of them destroying a ward housing 20 people previously wounded in the attacks.

“We deplore the indiscriminate shelling of a medical facility,” UNICEF Representative in Somalia Christian Balslev-Olesen said in response to the attack. “It is an action that is totally unacceptable and one for which no justification can be given. Where is the accountability in this conflict? Every day thousands of displaced people­most of them women and children­are living a nightmare of violence.”

Reports from the city tell of rotting corpses littering the streets, with people unable to collect the dead for several days because of the constant threat from the shelling. Only on Friday, during a lull in the fighting that followed the apparent seizure of Mogadishu’s northern suburbs by the Ethiopian forces, could residents begin to retrieve the dead.

Meanwhile, at least 350,000 people­a number that could swell to more than half a million­have fled the fighting, many of them camping outside Mogadishu without adequate water, food or medicine. Relief officials warn that the outbreak of epidemics could claim many more lives. Reportedly, at least 600 have died already as a result of cholera and other diseases.

Ali Mohamed Gedi, the prime minister in the US-backed transitional government, claimed Friday, “We have won the fighting against the insurgents,” meaning that the Ethiopian forces that are the TFG’s central of pillar of support had conquered the city. Western diplomats and other observers were skeptical of this claim, predicting that fighting will continue as long as the Ethiopian troops remain.

Gedi claimed that Ethiopian and pro-government forces were now working to suppress “pockets of resistance” and vowed, “We will capture any remaining terrorists who have escaped.”

The TFG and its Ethiopian backers routinely refer to those resisting them as “terrorists” and elements of al-Qaeda, a claim that serves to justify the atrocities being carried out in Somalia as part of the US-led “global war on terror.”

In reality, the fighting has largely erupted along clan lines, with members of the Hawiye clan­the majority population in the capital­resisting the imposition of the TFG, dominated by the Darod clan of its president, Yusuf, by the army of his long-time ally, the repressive regime in Ethiopia.

The Islamic Courts administration had won wide popular support by restoring relative peace and security to the Somali capital after the sporadic violence that has dominated the country since the overthrow of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The courts had driven out the warlords responsible for much of the mayhem, and now they are returning with US and Ethiopian support.

Hostility to the Ethiopian forces runs deep, stemming from the brutal 1977 war between Somalia and Ethiopia over the disputed Ogaden region, which inflicted heavy casualties and turned millions into refugees.

Washington backed the Ethiopian invasion last December on the grounds that the Islamic Courts represented the spread of radical Islamist forces in the strategic Horn of Africa and were harboring al-Qaeda activists implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

US warplanes carried out bombings in southern Somalia under the pretext of attacking “terrorists.” While these raids killed a number of civilians, there is no evidence that anyone linked to al-Qaeda was struck in the attacks.

US Special Forces troops were also sent into Somalia to direct Ethiopian operations. These American forces remain embedded within the Ethiopian military, making Washington directly and intimately responsible for the bloodbath that has been carried out over the past several weeks.

The French press agency AFP quoted Mogadishu residents reporting that joint patrols of Ethiopian troops and pro-TFG gunmen are sweeping through the northern neighborhoods of the city rounding up young men as suspected insurgents.

“They are moving from house to house arresting people,” said Ibrahim Sheikh Mao, a resident of the Suuqahoola area where much of the fighting took place. “I imagine they have arrested hundreds of people because they started the operation early in the morning.”

Shamso Nur, a woman in the al-Kamin area added, “All the men are fleeing the houses because Ethiopian forces are arresting them. I have seen three men near my house being taken by Ethiopian forces. I do not know if they were fighters, but they looked like civilians.” AFP said that its reporter in Mogadishu had seen 20 Somali men being herded into an Ethiopian military truck.

Clearly, there is an immediate threat of bloody reprisals against Mogadishu’s inhabitants.

Hundreds of those detained so far in the conflict have been shipped to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Abba. As the Washington Post reported Thursday, “More than 200 FBI and CIA agents have set up camp in the Sheraton Hotel here in Ethiopia’s capital and have been interrogating dozens of detainees­including a US citizen­picked up in Somalia and held without charge and without attorneys in a secret prison somewhere in this city….” Human rights groups have described the operation as a kind of “decentralized Guantanamo” in the Horn of Africa, and undoubtedly the same kind of abuses and torture used elsewhere in the “war on terrorism” are taking place there as well.

The bloody events in Mogadishu­which have provoked little if any controversy in Washington­are another warning that the war in Iraq is only one front in a global eruption of US militarism, as the American government employs armed force to seize control of strategic resources and regions.

The recklessness and brutality of this campaign threatens to ignite a far wider regional war, which could well draw in US combat troops. Already, the State Department has fingered the government of Eritrea­which is in a tense border dispute with Ethiopia­as a supposed “state sponsor” of those resisting the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia. Fighting within Somalia itself has spread to Kismayo, where rival clans have battled for control of the city.

Some 160,000 refugees have poured into Kenya, further destabilizing the situation there. And, on Tuesday, Somali minority rebels carried out a deadly attack on an oil installation in the Ethiopian-controlled Ogaden region, killing 74 people, including 9 Chinese.

The government of Ethiopia has claimed that it wants to withdraw its 20,000 troops and hand over security operations to a multinational force organized by the African Union. The AU, however, has proven incapable of mobilizing more than a handful of troops, and few African governments appear willing to send their armies into this dubious US-instigated conflict.

source:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/moga-a28.shtml

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

America’s Lies : Feith Referenced Fake Company As Evidence Of Pre-War Ties Between Iraq And Bin Laden

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

America’s Lies :

 

Feith Referenced Fake Company As Evidence Of Pre-War Ties Between Iraq And Bin Laden

Early last month, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) released a declassified version of a Pentagon Inspector General report that found that in Sept. 2002, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith gave a briefing entitled “Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and al-Qaida” to Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff.

In this “alternative” intelligence assessment, Feith asserted that Osama Bin Laden’s al-Hijra Company had business “contacts” with a Dutch company, Vlemmo N.V. and that Vlemmo was a “front for Iraqi military procurement“:

Dick Cheney “publicly praised” the Feith assessment as “the best source of information on the topic.”

Yesterday, however, the Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen explained that Feith had apparently invented the company, saying “Vlemmo is unknown to the Netherlands“:

The company has never been registered with the Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands and is also not known to the tax service. That the company may have served as a front for illegal arms trade with Iraq is equally unknown to me.

The Inspector General report concluded that Feith inappropriately “developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,’” which included “conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.”

source:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/feith-iraq-alqaeda/

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW